Monday, November 26, 2012

Dame Evelyn Glennie provided one of the highlights of the
London Olympics opening ceremony, leading 1000 drummers through a re-enactment
of the industrial revolution in a thundering collaboration with Underworld. For Glennie, it was a moment of triumph in an extraordinary
career.

Now, thanks to a remarkable story of vinyl archaeology, the
roots of that success have been exposed, with the re-release of a record Dame
Evelyn appeared on in her early teens, while at school in Aberdeenshire. More
surprisingly, this disc – of which fewer than 500 copies were originally
pressed – has been hailed by Tom Hodgkinson in The Times as “an avant-garde
masterpiece”.

The group’s name seems to offer a clue to its future
success, but the Cults Percussion Ensemble was just that: an Aberdeenshire
schools group, tutored by Ron Forbes, who moved to the North East after a stint
in the London Jazz Four, having earned his musical spurs in the Coldstream
Guards. The album was made to sell at concerts, and had gone unnoticed by the
wider world until it was spotted by Jonny Trunk, whose label, Trunk Records,
specialises in library music and TV and film soundtracks (including porn – the
label motto is “Music – Nostalgia – Sex”).He found the record at Spitalfields
Market in London, and was immediately enthralled.

“It had the word ‘Cults’ on the front, and I didn’t know it
was a place,” says Trunk. “I just thought it was some spooky thing. Then when I
heard it I thought it was absolutely magical. From the second it starts, it’s
just enchanting. And it’s so beautifully played. It’s amazing what a well-tuned
group of 14 year-olds can do.”

Dame Evelyn admits to being “delighted” by the album’s
reappearance, and readily concedes to the importance of the Ensemble in her
development. It was under Forbes’s tutelage that she first explored percussion,
and the success of the Ensemble – it won several inter-schools competitions –
led to European dates, and an “unbelievable” appearance at the Royal Albert
Hall. “I remember all the parents gathering to see us off on what seemed like
the endless bus journey to London,” Dame Evelyn recalls. “It was quite an
experience.”

She also recalls going shopping with her mother to buy the
material for the full-length kilt that was the Ensemble’s uniform. “She had to make the kilt. We got to choose
the tartan; I think it was Mackintosh. I still have it somewhere, but it’s
probably too big now. I was a chubby little girl!”

Forbes, now retired and living in Crete, is surprised by the
album’s re-emergence, but has fond memories of working with Glennie. “It
inspired Evelyn. Playing at the Albert Hall as a kid is quite an experience. I
think she saw that what she wanted in life was going to happen. She was very
single-minded and she went for it full time.”

When Glennie first auditioned for the Ensemble, she wasn’t
completely deaf, recalls Forbes. “She tried to play the clarinet, but because
her hearing was so bad she used to blow so loud she nearly blew the keys off,
poor kid, because she wanted to hear what she was doing. So the music teacher
at her school, Ellon Academy, said to me, ‘I don’t think she’ll be any good.’
But when I tested her, I knew she was a fine musician. She had perfect pitch.”

Forbes adapted his teaching to cope with Glennie’s deteriorating
hearing, allowing her to “hear” the tuning by sensing the vibrations in the
instruments. “She didn’t like listening to music so much then, because she was
getting a lot of distorted sounds. When her hearing went, it was better for
her, because she had a clear mind, and if she saw the notes she knew what they
sounded like. So when I wrote the nine parts for the different players, she
would learn them all, so she could hear the overall sound.”

At 13, Glennie is the youngest musician on the record, and
she can be heard playing timpani and xylophone. “She was in the learning
process then,” says Forbes. “It was the first chance she’d had to play
something, and to make progress, to know that she was developing.

“But she eventually became the principal player. A year
later, she played all the hard bits.”

From these humble beginnings, Glennie has developed into a
musician of international standing, but she acknowledges the importance of her
time with the Ensemble, and the day Forbes gave her a snare drum and no sticks,
and told her to create the sound of a storm, and then a whisper. “It’s not
about the instruments,” she says. “It’s about the teaching, and using your
imagination.”

As to the record being an “avant-garde masterpiece”, Forbes
is modestly dismissive. “I don’t know how I feel about that. You guys do that –
you classify it.” Suffice to say, the Percussion Ensemble isn’t the only cult
record Forbes has been associated with. The London Jazz Four’s 1967 LP, Take A
New Look At The Beatles has a growing reputation, with some critics – those who
appreciate good vibes - suggesting that its arrangements surpass the
Lennon/McCartney originals.